Enhancing User Defined Fields: A Closer Look at Recent Improvements in Canvas Catalog

[KataKeri]

At our core, we thrive on user feedback. It's the main source of our development process, guiding us toward crafting solutions that truly resonate with our Community. Recently, fueled by insights garnered from discovery calls and the exchange of ideas within our Community, we embarked on a journey to enhance our User Defined Fields (UDFs) feature. Today, I'm thrilled to unveil the outcomes of this collaborative effort and offer a glimpse into what lies ahead.

What's New?

1. Revamped UI for UDF Management: We've redesigned the interface from the ground up to streamline the administrative experience. Navigating through UDFs is now smoother and more intuitive, empowering administrators to effortlessly manage their data.
2. New HTML input types: Responding to your requests, we've introduced a new date option type, accompanied by a sleek calendar interface for seamless date selection. We’ve also added a select type, which would help gather the relevant data if you want a specific answer. 
3. HTML Formatting: With HTML formatting, you can stylize your questions, and add links if you will. 
4. Order of UDFs: Flexibility is key, which is why we've enabled the ability to reorder UDFs according to your preferences. Whether you need to prioritize certain fields or simply reorganize, it's now as easy as a few clicks.

What's Next?

We're not stopping here. Building upon these advancements, we're currently working on another improvement:

• Collecting UDFs on Enrollment Level: Soon, you'll have the ability to gather UDFs at the enrollment stage, not just during registration. This way you will be able to keep the UDFs updated with each enrollment, and those learners can also provide their data, who did not register through Catalog.
  
  

Your Feedback Matters!

As we continue to refine and innovate, your feedback remains invaluable. We invite you to explore these new features, currently available in production, and share your thoughts with us. Whether it's praise, suggestions, or even more ideas for UDF enhancements, your input shapes the future of our platform.

How to Participate:

The feedback form is open until May 10th, 2024. Don't miss this opportunity to make your voice heard and contribute to the evolution of our platform. Together, we'll continue to push the boundaries of what's possible and create solutions that truly make a difference.

Thank you for being an essential part of our journey towards excellence.

Kata Kéri
Product Manager for Catalog

Release notes:
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog-Releases/Catalog-Release-Notes-2024-04-15/ta-p/599...
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog-Releases/Catalog-Release-Notes-2024-04-22/ta-p/600... 

Screenshots:

[jsowalsk]

@KataKeri When will this occur and what will it entail? Is it for enrollees or admins?

Collecting UDFs on Enrollment Level: Soon, you'll have the ability to gather UDFs at the enrollment stage, not just during registration. This way you will be able to keep the UDFs updated with each enrollment, and those learners can also provide their data, who did not register through Catalog.

[jsowalsk]

@KataKeri Have these release notes been pushed out? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog-Releases/Catalog-Release-Notes-2024-04-22/ta-p/600... 

[jsowalsk]

@KataKeri I still dont see them.

[jsowalsk]

@KataKeri Finally available.

[JenniferJWhite]

Thank you, @KataKeri, for the promised UDFs at the enrollment level!  Our institution does not use the registration page (per our institutional security requirements), but we would LOVE to capture important information from students upon enrollment in specific courses. We look forward to this enhancement, so thanks again to you and the development team!!

[rpsloan]

I echo what @JenniferJWhite said! We also do not use the registration page and it's an existing feature that our subcatalog admins would like but cannot use because it is ties to user registration instead of user enrollment.

[sbarry2]

I added a Date of Birth with the new date format box. Unfortunately, I noticed some unexpected results. Previously, I had a column for DOB that students would enter any text. That column is still in my report (On the catalog screen), but when I added the new column for the Date entry, hoping that would get everyone in one format (that works). However, I now have so many columns they aren't showing in the Catalog screen, only when I print the report. I would like to be able to combine information from multiple reports also. 

It would be helpful if we could choose the columns visible in the Catalog on-screen reports. And delete old column information. 

[KataKeri]

@sbarry2 

If you use the same key/name for the new field as for the previous one then it will be in the same column in Analytics.

Arranging/selecting relevant columns within analytics is on our radar, I'll add you feature request too the insights. Thank you!

[KataKeri]

hello @JenniferJWhite @sbarry2 @jsowalsk

good news, enrollment level UDFs are now available on beta!

Release notes are here. 

[sbarry2]

@KataKeri @jsowalsk @JenniferJWhite I can't explain why I created a new column versus editing the existing column. But, really I should have tested it on beta first. I will check out the new UDFs. Thank you for the reply. 

[rpsloan]

@KataKeri I was testing this in Beta but can't figure out where to find the collected UDF response from enrollment that doesn't involve API since most of our subcatalog admins won't be able to do that.

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan Collected UDFs should appear on the Users tab within Analytics. 

[rpsloan]

@KataKeri It doesn't show up for me in Beta. Would this be because UDF only shows for users with accounts locally created via user registration?

Edit: I should've mentioned that this is in relation to the Beta release for the UDF at the enrollment level.

Screenshot of Users tab in Analytics page of the Catalog admin dashboard

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan yeah it's not displayed on my beta also. we're looking into it, sorry for the inconvenience. I'll update you once we've found the culprit. 

[rpsloan]

@KataKeri Thank you very much!

[JenniferJWhite]

Great stuff, @KataKeri !  Thank you so much for all of your work and follow-up on this feature -- we'll be testing it out shortly, too! 🙂

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan can you please check now?
Under Catalog Info you should see the toggle to enable the feature and then the collected UDFs should appear within Analytics User tab - there could be some delay though (few minutes). 

[rpsloan]

Thanks @KataKeri ! I'll keep checking the Users tab in Analytics in Beta throughout today. I haven't seen any of the collected UDFs I've done today yet with my account.

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan Did you enable the feature on that particular Catalog level? Here:

[rpsloan]

Hi @KataKeri! Yes, I had it enabled on the subcatalog level. I was able to see and fill the two UDF fields as I was enrolling in my test listing multiple times. The collected info still doesn't show up.

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan I'll connect you via email, including your CSM. We need to investigate this. 

[makraft]

@KataKeri  I am excited to see these changes in the works, but I'm not feeling very confident about the benefit for our use cases yet. 

I had hoped that the enrollment UDFs feature would allow us to shift UDF data collection off the registration page so we can put some more advanced authentication options on our Catalogs, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm seeing the new UDFs still presented at registration as well as at course enrollment. I think that redundancy will not be a good user experience. Asking returning users to fill out this data every time they enroll will not be a good user experience and lead to inconsistent data for reporting purposes. 

One thing we want is the ability for customers to manage their own data, or at least for our admins to be able to do that, at the subcatalog level. This may be a step in that direction but it is not there yet. We have one customer who occasionally needs to have user data updated for one particular field, which always requires a ticket to support because we cannot edit that static reports value. I can just imagine how unhappy that person who makes this change on our behalf will be if they have to update this value across multiple enrollments for a user. 

I'm still waiting on on my users report data to show up in analytics, which is taking a lot longer than a few minutes in beta, so maybe I will be pleasantly surprised and some of my concerns above are unfounded, but so far I don't see us enabling this functionality anytime soon if this is as good as it gets. 

[KataKeri]

hi @makraft, thank you for the honest feedback! I really appreciate it.

To be precise, this is just the first iteration of improving on the UDFs. In the long run we'd like to provide an option for admins to adjust the UDFs and then create a user profile where users can edit their UDSs themselves.

What do you think what would help with the enrollment level UDF collection in your case? Adding an option to collect the UDF for the first enrollment only?

Unfortunately we need to display the UDFs on the Enrollments tab within Analytics at the moment, as there are some cases where the users are not present on the Users tab (when they are not registered through Catalog) - so we can only show the collected UDFs on the Enrollments tab, where they are present. I know this is redundant, and we're also thinking how to solve this.

So, keep in mind, that this is only the beginning, and again, keep the feedback coming!

Thank you!

[rpsloan]

@KataKeri I like the idea of users being able to manage their info via their user profile. Curious to know if it would be more helpful to have collected UDFs in its own tab (User info tab?) instead of displaying in Enrollments and Registration?

[KataKeri]

@rpsloan That's one thing we're considering! 

[KataKeri]

@makraft also: We load the form with the prefilled data, if nothing changed they still just have to press the Enroll button at the bottom. 

[makraft]

@KataKeri 

I have 3 things I want related to UDFs -

1. The first is to get them off the user registration page because that blocks us from using non-Instructure user authentication. This could be as much a user registration experience change as it is removing the UDFs from the current flow. 
2. Be able to collect different UDFs for a single user across multiple subcatalogs, which is what this new feature aims to address.
3. The ability to manage the UDF data so that changes can be made without having to get Instructure support to do it.

 we need to display the UDFs on the Enrollments tab within Analytics at the moment

From my testing today in beta, I'm not seeing the data for the tests I did with enrollment UDFs anywhere in the analytics. It seems odd that this would go to prod this weekend with this piece missing, so maybe I'm not looking in the right place or something else needs to be configured?

[rpsloan]

@KataKeri I think the issue @makraft mentioned is the same issue we reported last week related to UDFs collected on the enrollment level not showing in the Enrollments tab for accounts not created via Catalog. Has there been any progress to a fix?

[KataKeri]

@makraft @rpsloan 
Sorry for the confusion.

Enrollment level UDFs are now present on the Users tab within Analytics on beta. You possibly need to re-test it, as we had a beta refresh earlier this week.

Showing collected UDFs on the Enrollments tab within Analytics will be released to beta next week, then on the following week to prod.

[emc2]

@KataKeri I noticed in my testing that when a student enrolls in two different courses from two different sub-catalogs, the UDFs attached to those courses are all clumped together at the bottom of the check-out page. So a student enrolling in those courses isn't able to determine what UDFs belong to what listing. Presumably the UDFs will fall in the same order of the courses on the check-out page but a student wouldn't necessarily know that.

Are there any plans to make it clearer which UDFs go with which listing?

[KataKeri]

@emc2 Thank you for the feedback, it is well noted. Can I ask why the student wants to know which UDF belongs to which listing? Do you have any insights for this? 

[makraft]

@KataKeri @emc2 I had not tested this the issue of UDFs being clumped together yet, but the same problem would apply to us as well.

At my school we have several sub catalogs. Some of our Catalog managers use UDFs to collect demographic data from their learners. In a subcatalog context, the UDFs from an enrollment in another subcatalog should not be presented with the enrollments in the current subcatalog. 

I know this complicates things greatly in a subcatalog context they way the new UDFs are being delivered because a user has one account in Canvas. 

As a Kaltura admin, I can relate this to a similar service they provide for media entries called "Custom Metadata profiles." Even though all of the Custom Medata fields are technically available to all the media, only one Custom Metatdata profile is permitted to be associated with the media in a single Kaltura Mediaspace. 

Applying a similar logic to Catalog, we need to be able to only display the UDFs for listings in the specific Catalog the user is enrolling in, not all the UDFs in all the Catalogs the user may be associated with across all catalogs. 

If you can solve this, it could also help decouple the UDFs from the new user account creation flow on the login page, which opens up Catalog authentication options to be more robust and more like Canvas. 

Thanks for continuing the good work here!

[emc2]

@KataKeri This was a test student I was using to test the new UDFs. I think in general it would be helpful for students to be able to see which UDF belongs to which listing to avoid confusion or questions on their end. It would help with transparency to know what information is being given to different courses they are enrolling in. Thanks!

[KataKeri]

@makraft @emc2 
Thanks for the feedback, I'll forward this to the team and the new PM to consider it as a further development. 

[sbarry2]

I recently added a "Selection" question UDF to our Registration form. It is a simple YES/NO question. I would like it to default to YES in the dropdown/ make YES the first selection. However, it seems to go alphabetical.  Another example would be if I added a MAYBE then the order would be MAYBE/NO/YES. Not a deal breaker, but the option to list in a particular order would be nice. Thanks. (update; we went with AGREE/DISAGREE)

[makraft]

I hate to say it, but it seems like in the attempt to improve UDFs, things have only gotten worse.

We encountered a new reporting headache today with UDFs. We have several sub sub Catalogs that have the same parent.

Main Catalog
  Parent
    child 1
    child 2 with UDFS
    child 3

Only one of the sub subs has UDFs, however, when we run analytics on a sub sub that doesn't have the UDFs (e.g. child 1 or child 3), the UDFs from the other catalog, child 2, are included in the report. This is causing a lot of headaches for our managers who are trying to prepare year end reports for their granting agencies. 

When I move the  child 1 sub sub catalog without the UDFs out of it's collective parent catalog, the problem goes away:

Main Catalog
  child 1  
  Parent
    child 2 with UDFS
    child 3

This is really frustrating!

[JenniferJWhite]

Hi, @makraft - We feel your pain.  The UDFs need to be associated with a specific *course* -- not a subcatalog. It's the only way it makes sense, really.

[rpsloan]

Ditto. I have put in a ticket asking why UDFs created in a subcatalog show up in an entirely different subcatalog when you download the enrollment analytics CSV. This feels like a bug to me but I don't sense the urgency to fix it. And it felt that there’s this assumption that subcatalog admins are okay seeing UDFs, wherever these UDFs were created. I have informed my CSM about this not being acceptable since our subcatalog admins should only be limited to those subcatalog admins. Students who provide info will have to be informed that the data they provide will be visible/accessible to other subcatalog admins in the system.

[KataKeri]

@makraft @JenniferJWhite @rpsloan 
Thanks for letting me know about the reporting problem. I've forwarded this to the Catalog team and their new PM to take a look at and provide a solution.